


Morning Mayhem

by hufflepirate



Series: Teenage Girl Avengers AU [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Female, Alternate Universe - High School, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1499095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teenage!Girl!Avengers.</p><p>It's hard enough having six teenage girls sharing one floor of Stark Tower.  Add the fact that half of them have superpowers and none of them have parents around, and it gets even worse.  Cleo Barton doesn't mind watching the mayhem going on below her every morning, but at some point, she knows it has to stop.</p><p>(Toni curses a bit, but not enough to raise the rating.  I don't think?  Anyway, minor curse words ahead...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning Mayhem

Cleo Barton had gotten used to being the first one awake in the mornings, but then Stephanie Rogers had thawed out and moved in and messed the entire morning schedule up with her early-morning runs and too-long showers, and the Tower hadn't quite settled back into equilibrium yet. Cleo had responded by moving her showers to the evening instead of the morning and shoving a beanie on over her pixie cut when it got squashed funny overnight.  She missed the way morning showers always made her feel awake, but had replaced that burst of cold water with an extra cup of coffee and learned to make do.

And now she could spend her mornings sitting up at the top of the stairs leading up to the roof and watching everybody else's chaos as they tried to get ready for school.  And that was ok, too.  Actually, it was kind of fun.  Especially on days like today, when Brooke retreated up here with her, out of the fray and away from the extra stress of six teenage girls sharing one bathroom. (Though, if Cleo admitted it, it was also fun watching the usually quiet curly-haired girl Hulk out and smash things. Either one was an entertaining morning in her book.)

"Stephanie!  Hurry up!  The rest of us need showers _too._ " Natasha took short, quick showers and had very little patience for those of them who didn't, especially on days when she had tests.  And she had _two_ today, which meant she was the one Cleo expected to cause most of this morning's problems. It was wise to get out of Tasha's way when she was on the warpath, but while Steph was wise, she was also relentlessly, eternally stubborn, so sometimes she chose not to. And Thora was just flat-out _not_ wise, most of the time, but she was out of the drama radius for the moment.  Which was a little disappointing.

"I'm getting out!  Jeepers creepers!  You don't have to yell!"

"Yes, I do!  I have a _test_ today!"

Something smashed in the kitchen, and it was probably Thora's fault.  In the absence of the Hulk, things breaking were usually either Thora's fault or Toni's, and Cleo was pretty sure she hadn't seen Toni all morning.  Which was also likely to make things interesting. Toni needed a good early start on getting ready for school, because her hair and makeup always had to be perfect. The way she put it, if she couldn't be brilliant _and_ popular, then what was the point in being Antonia Stark?

Brooke sighed, "I've told Thora a thousand times that those plates are not made of metal and she can't carry a plate, bowl, mug, and glass of orange juice all at once.  But every time we go out to dinner, she decides that if the waitress can do it, so can she."

Cleo laughed.  That sounded about right.  But before she could say anything, the elevator doors were opening and Toni was flying out of them at breakneck speed, the bottom half of her legs covered in their parts of her Iron Lady suit, to speed her up.  She was cursing in a steady, rhythmic stream, which didn't stop until she was close enough to the other girls to shout at them.

"Why didn't anyone tell me it was _morning_?  What is _wrong_ with you people?"

Tasha wasn't having it.  "What's wrong with _us_? What's wrong with _you_?  We have a history test today, and you spent the whole night in the _lab_!"

"Oh shit, I was going to help you study, wasn't I?"  Toni ran a hand through her chin-length hair, which flipped adorably outward and was generally unfairly well-behaved.

"Yes!" Tasha answered shortly, "You were!  But you know what? It's fine.  I don't _need_ you, Stark. I can do this on my own. _IF A CERTAIN SUPER SOLDIER WILL GET OUT OF THE SHOWER_." She turned, at the end, shouting through the door.

"I said I was coming!" Steph's shouts were clearer now. The water had stopped running, and Cleo was half surprised that Tasha hadn't just burst in on the other girl the second the water noises stopped, with how tightly wound she was. But then the door opened, a cloud of steam puffing out, and Steph said calmly, "Yell at Toni, if you're gonna yell, because it was her stupid high-tech security system that made me late getting back from my run."

Tasha was past Steph in an instant, shoving her out of the way and beating Toni into the bathroom before slamming the door almost in the other girls' faces.

"Hey, just because you can't remember the password, Old Lady Rogers..."

"Just because _you_ can't remember to tell us when you _change_ it..."

Cleo settled in to watch some high-quality Steph-and-Toni bickering, but it was interrupted by Thora's abrupt entrance. Her hand was bleeding onto her jeans, but she didn't seem to think much of it.  "Lady of Iron!" she announced, "The coffee pot is broken again, and I have misplaced the bandages."

Toni sighed heavily, glaring for a moment at the closed bathroom door (the sound of the shower had started up again) and then for a moment at Steph.  Then she turned to Thora and patted the other girl on the shoulder. "It's alright. I had JARVIS order two, the last time we broke one.  There's a spare in that cabinet over the fridge."

"I shall retreive it, but I need someone to operate the machinery."  Thora was excellent with computers, but terrible with all the devices in the kitchen, and Toni rolled her eyes and went to make more coffee.  If she'd been in the lab all night, she was probably going to need it anyway.  Cleo considered popping down for a third cup, but then decided against it.

Steph sighed, looking after Toni and Thora. She was in her bathrobe, with her towel twisted up around her head, and when she realized no one was talking to her just now, she let her hair down, untwisting the towel and rubbing the rest as dry as she could get it.  She'd had short hair in the Army, but now she was growing it out, purely because she could.  It had made it all the way to her shoulders, now, though it was still several inches shorter than Thora's usual thick braid.  She shoved it up into a ponytail, nine times out of ten, to get it out of her way, but they all knew she liked having it.

"Sorry about the fuss!" Steph shouted up toward the stairs, once her hair was as dry as it was going to get and her towel could be deposited at the bathroom door for Tasha to hang up when she got out. "Do you need another cup of tea, Brooke?"

The dark-haired girl shook her head. "Nah, I'm ok. I've still got some." Cleo would never be able to wake up in the morning if all she drank was Brooke's soothing herbal tea. But Cleo also wouldn't turn into a giant green monster if she overdid the caffiene, so it didn't really matter.

* * *

 

By the time they were all piling into the limo behind Happy, five minutes after they _should_ have left for school, the uneasy truce Thora had unwittingly brokered between Steph and Toni had been thoroughly broken.  They'd had one of their usual screaming matches. Steph had called Toni vain and shallow and pointless and Toni had called Steph out-of-touch and melodramatic and useless, and now they were sitting next to each other in the limo, pointedly not looking at each other, or at Tasha, who had made her own thoughts known on the subject of _both_ girls when they left too long a pause in yelling at each other.

Thora had tried her best to stop the arguing, and Cleo respected the effort, but the others had been too far gone. Cleo wasn't completely sure which of the three had brought up the fact that Thora wasn't even human and should stay out of it, but it had not gone over well with Thora. Now it was storming, thunder rumbling weakly overhead as Thora sat beside Tasha and they both glared across the aisle at Steph and Toni.  Cleo tried to keep from looking too much like the cat who ate the canary. She liked it any time she got to be the cool one.

Brooke had left the breakfast table when the shouting started, and she wasn't here now.  She was up front with Happy, even though he usually didn't allow it. It was better this way. It had been a long time since Jarvis had been forced to break one of their fights up, and keeping Brooke (and the Hulk) out of it was generally the way to go.

Cleo ran her hand through her damp hair, listening to the storm.  Since she was the only one who hadn't been fighting, she was also the only one who could stop the fight. Probably.  Maybe.  But the school was getting closer and closer, so if she was going to deflate the tension, she needed to do it fast. And unlike JARVIS, she couldn't just turn the sprinklers on overhead, like they were a bunch of stray cats that needed separating with a garden hose.

"So, uhh," she said, "I guess we found a solution to our shower-schedule problem, though, right? Just have Jarvis open up the floodgates and dump on us? We'll get the toast out of the way next time, though, of course." 

The other four turned to her. They didn't laugh, but half a smile was ghosting around Tasha's lips, so Cleo kept going. She didn't talk much when she didn't have to, but right now, she had to.

"Any idea if the sprinklers are hooked to the _warm_ water, Toni? 'Cause that's clearly the next step. And then maybe some soap in some of them?  Get a bunch of suds spraying out or something?"

Toni had looked vaguely offended at the beginning of the joke, but by the end, she was grinning broadly, that wicked look in her eyes that always meant trouble.  "You mean a foam party, Barton?  I think that can be arranged."

Tasha didn't look at Toni.  She kept her eyes locked on Cleo's.  But she was considering it.  "After this week's tests are over?  As a reward for all that studying?  I could do that."

Cleo was pretty sure Thora only half-knew what was going on, but the half she knew was "party," so it was completely unsurprising when she laughed loudly and clapped Tasha on the back so hard that anyone else would have fallen over.  "Excellent!  Celebration should always follow a great victory!"

Thora just assumed Tasha would do well on the tests. But then, so did the rest of them. Tasha just liked to make _sure_. Cleo had no doubt that Tasha would ace any test she put her mind to.

"Stephanie?" Cleo asked, meeting the other girl's eyes.

Steph laughed.  "Yeah, fine.  For a modern thing, it doesn't sound so bad.  Foam party after our tests are done."  She didn't seem overly enthusiastic, but Cleo was sure she recognized it for what it was - a bonding experience, and a chance to break up the remnants of this morning's fight.

Cleo was proud of herself as she walked into the school beside Brooke, explaining that they were having a party this weekend and watching the other four talk - with a tentative warmth - about what to expect from it.  Before they split off into their various classes, Brooke grabbed Cleo's arm. "Hey, good job with them. I wish I could help more, I just..."

Cleo nodded, "I know.  But it's cool.  I got your back.  And I know you've got mine. You're better than the rest of those lunatics."

Brooke looked at her seriously. "Sometimes I think we're all lunatics. But at least we'll be the fun kind of lunatics this weekend."

Cleo grinned.  "Yeah.  We will.  It'll be good for us."

Everyone getting along might make for less interesting mornings, but it had to be done.  And Cleo always did what had to be done.


End file.
